Husband Hunting, Higher Education, and Hubris

It's not like me to be snarky. OK, it is, but I try not to wade too deeply in the waters of condemning other women for putting their perspective out there. Until, that is, they put something out there that is just ridiculous, and a lot of people comment that they are just speaking the TRUTH, people, FINALLY.

Have you ever noticed that when women say mean and vaguely paranoid things to other women, they start with saying something along the lines of "now I'm just being HONEST?" That's often the phrase that comes before statements like "yeah, that does make you look fat," "he's out of your league," "you're not getting any younger, you know," "you were asking for it," or "you're such a slut."

This letter written by a past senior class president of Princeton strikes me as being along the same lines, so I'm going to respond to it. I know I'm late, but this piece contains almost everything that I hate about everything, so I have to try. Besides, that poetry post from earlier today didn't get any traction (but hey...I tried!).

Everything in italics is from the original letter. I would not want to be accused of taking anything out of context, so the entire letter is here, in order, start to finish.

Response to Advice for the young women of Princeton: the daughters I never had by Susan A. Patton

Forget about having it all, or not having it all, leaning in or leaning out — here’s what you really need to know that nobody is telling you.

Again, you're not the only one out there speaking the ugly truth. EVERYONE is telling young women how to find and keep a man. You see it in every Glamour magazine article titled "We asked 50 different men what's sexiest about you!" (and got 50 different answers! you're welcome!) and every creepy old dude who is a sports commentator talking about how hot the quarterback's girlfriend is so he comes up with some line like "hey young fellas, if you want to get the prettiest girls, you'd better start throwing that football around!" This is why we have pole dancing classes and articles in today's Redeye extolling the virtues of college students getting sugar daddies to pay tuition because, as one of those MARRIED daddies told his sugar baby (so much ew factor in all of this) "You will only be young and hot once." Unfortunately, you are just one of many in this idiotic refrain.

For years (decades, really) we have been bombarded with advice on professional advancement, breaking through that glass ceiling and achieving work-life balance.

This is true, though not everyone has been bombarded with that advice--it's been mostly highly-educated, upper middle-class women. Everyone else has just had to deal with work-life balance forever, because that's how it is.

We can figure that out — we are Princeton women. If anyone can overcome professional obstacles, it will be our brilliant, resourceful, very well-educated selves.

Where to begin? I know I just have to ignore the unbelievable pomposity of your language, but it's hard. Are you sure you are brilliant? What about all the legacy admissions? The George W. Bush's of the Yale world? Getting into college, even a really good one, really doesn't speak to resourcefulness at all. And how about the entire history of worker's rights, which did not emanate from women like you? All those pesky professional obstacles that others have overcome, like the 80 hour workweek and faulty building codes that kill factory workers and sexual harassment and age and weight requirements for female flight attendants and on and on? How about the brilliant, very well-educated kids who can't find a job today at Whole Foods? Or the ones who have spent their lives hearing how brilliant they are, only to find out that no one in the working world really cares, because there are a lot of other qualities that are important in real life?

I hear the words "professional obstacles" and I wonder how I, just a normally-smart, resourceful, not yet well educated 19 year old, dealt with a summer job as a secretary in the office of the building of a mammoth of an office structure right by the river, where the owner was a leg man and required us to wear skirts and would feel up our legs to make sure we had nylons on, and his son was a junkie but they let him wear the union electrician uniform anyway and you never wanted to be alone with him for a second because he would rob you blind and run to get his next fix. I wonder how it was that I was in charge, that I carried a radio and gave orders over an intercom to a bunch of highly skilled workers, all of them men, how I knew what to do when one of the guys almost severed his finger in an accident, while my boss was out golfing? I hear "professional obstacles" and I think of myself at age 23, lying on the basement floor of the apartment building where I had taken a second job as building manager, attempting to fix an industrial-sized boiler with a common wrench and then reaching for the blowtorch and thinking shit, I'm not getting paid enough to risk some kind of natural gas explosion, and calling the building owner and telling him to find someone else for the job. I think about myself at 16, when I was hired to work as a "package girl" in a luxury apartment building and my job was to do light paperwork and answer phones and make deliveries to rich dudes all while looking cute and learning when to just LOCK THE DAMN DOOR when that one guy came around. Or the time when I was 12 and I got an obscene phone call while I was babysitting...and the call was from the kids' dad. I could write a book about professional obstacles, just based on shit that happened before I turned 20. And my life isn't even that interesting compared to most people's.

A few weeks ago, I attended the Women and Leadership conference on campus that featured a conversation between President Shirley Tilghman and Wilson School professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, and I participated in the breakout session afterward that allowed current undergraduate women to speak informally with older and presumably wiser alumnae. I attended the event with my best friend since our freshman year in 1973. You girls glazed over at preliminary comments about our professional accomplishments and the importance of networking. Then the conversation shifted in tone and interest level when one of you asked how have Kendall and I sustained a friendship for 40 years. You asked if we were ever jealous of each other. You asked about the value of our friendship, about our husbands and children. Clearly, you don’t want any more career advice.

OK, I'm going to put this out there. Maybe they did want career advice--just not from you. Maybe their eyes glazed over because you're boring, or because you spent the whole time talking about yourself. I don't know--I wasn't there. I do remember that when I graduated from grad school (from a public university in a big city! where I went to classes at night because I worked full time! and it didn't make a damn bit of difference for my career...as evidenced by me getting hired for my current job over someone who went to the London School of Economics!), our commencement speech was given by a woman who droned on and on about HERSELF, giving us no advice about what to do in the exciting wide world, because it was like she was reading her resume or writing her own letter of recommendation or something. So...maybe it was like that. And maybe they asked if you were jealous of each other because they were getting a vibe. No one has ever asked me that question about any of my female friends, not ever, so that's just weird. Maybe it's an Ivy League thing. Who knows.

At your core, you know that there are other things that you need that nobody is addressing. A lifelong friend is one of them. Finding the right man to marry is another.

I'm with you here. There are so many things that no one is addressing. The nature of hubris is one of them. And lifelong friends are amazing, but I don't think it counts as lifelong if you meet at age 18. That's a good long friendship. But call me when a woman you've known since kindergarten buys you groceries when you're going through treatment for an aggressive form of cancer. And as for finding the right man to marry, well...it's definitely important to find the right man (or woman! you've heard about that, right?) as opposed to someone you can't stand if you're going to get hitched for life. Somehow I doubt they were asking for advice about that, though.

When I was an undergraduate in the mid-seventies, the 200 pioneer women in my class would talk about navigating the virile plains of Princeton as a precursor to professional success. Never being one to shy away from expressing an unpopular opinion, I said that I wanted to get married and have children. It was seen as heresy.

You went to undergrad with the pioneers? Like covered wagons and shit? WORD. And the virile plains! I WANT TO GO THERE. Especially with the heresy, and the people who answer the question "what would you consider to be professional success?" with "I want to get married and have children." That's a fine thing to want! But that wasn't the question, right? ANSWER THE QUESTION.



For most of you, the cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.

I would like to go back to school right now and write a thesis about this sentence. Look, if you are going to get married, happiness with the person you choose is high on the list of important things. And many studies have shown that people are happier if they have friends, if they have companionship (including, for example, pets) and if they have lots of sex. These are basic human needs. Of course this is not to say that people need to have these things all the time or forever or with one person. Having a friend, companion and lover whom you like a lot and is no farther than the other side of the bed is a huge plus of marriage. Unless, that is, your marriage is abusive or empty or loveless or more like roommates or dragging you down into the depths of despair because all he can talk about is Princeton. I like being in love and I like sex and I'm glad I'm not dating. But I dream, every day, of the days and months and years I spent living alone, which was a kind of happiness that has stuck with me, and one I wouldn't trade for the world, one I can imagine having again, even though I love my family to pieces.

I will even grant you the fact that college, and high school, are some of the only places where you are surrounded by thousands of people in your age group, and you get to kind of hang out together casually just by stopping by each other's houses or rooms in a way you will never do again. These are times when--if you are lucky enough to have this kind of life, which most people are not--part of your job, part of your WORK, is learning interesting things and finding yourself. I was a double-major in college, and chose English as one of those majors because I knew I would never again have the privilege of reading so many good books and writing about them. In college I chose the early shifts for work, bought the paper on sundays and read it with my coffee, took walks by myself, cried with happiness over the sun streaming through my window when I was studying one day alone. I became myself, in a way, and I am still that person. And my boyfriend lived hundreds of miles away, and there wasn't a single person at my entire college I wanted to invite into my bed--not one.

I can't even get to the part where you discuss men who are worthy of you. Ah, the worthy men! Those with high SAT scores! And loads of money! Are they also rugged and handsome? Geeky but chic? Do tell! I'm one of the unwashed masses I guess, so I don't know what exactly you're talking about there. At age 21, I wanted to be with/continue dating/potentially marry a young man who was a bike messenger; he had gone to art school. That "only" worked out for six years or so, and we didn't get married, though I couldn't have been prouder to have been with him.

Here’s what nobody is telling you: Find a husband on campus before you graduate. Yes, I went there.

No you didn't! Oh yes you did. That's the whole point of your letter, so we know you went there. I'm happy for all my friends who found awesome husbands in college, high school, and even grade school. I'm happy for the ones who got divorced when it no longer worked. I'm happy for the ones who found someone any way they found him or her, and I'm happy for the ones who are happy without partners or who are happy sleeping around or whatever makes folks happy and isn't killing someone.

I am the mother of two sons who are both Princetonians. My older son had the good judgment and great fortune to marry a classmate of his, but he could have married anyone.

I want to name my next hamster Princetonian. And are you sure he could have married ANYONE, mama? ANYONE? The tattoo artist at the place where he drunkenly got his first ink? Chelsea Clinton? Any of the girls he talked down to because they weren't worthy? Me? WHOA NELLY. Definitely not me.

My younger son is a junior and the universe of women he can marry is limitless.

Um...not anymore.

Men regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated. It’s amazing how forgiving men can be about a woman’s lack of erudition, if she is exceptionally pretty. Smart women can’t (shouldn’t) marry men who aren’t at least their intellectual equal. As Princeton women, we have almost priced ourselves out of the market. Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are. And I say again — you will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you.

Gah! Oh, where to begin...maybe with the premise that intelligence and education are the cornerstones for happiness, especially if you gauge intelligence by some weird false pedigree? Or with the notion that one can't be smart and pretty (there's one reason to be glad to have only a brother--I never got typecast as the smart one or the pretty one or the tomboy or the girly one--I got to be all of those and a lot more!) or that men care about nothing but looks? Now, there are dudes like that out there--sure. And Princeton women--you don't want those dudes. No one should want them. They're morons. If you all are in a situation where you are pricing yourselves out of the market, what's the price for that poontang, if I might ask? And that limited population of men who are as smart as you, or smarter...they are coming out of the woodwork now, from the military and their three jobs and the community colleges and the homes where they are raising children by themselves and everywhere else where fascinating men dwell, and they are ignoring the hell out of you--because you're not worthy. You're not worthy because you think your shit doesn't stink.

Of course, once you graduate, you will meet men who are your intellectual equal — just not that many of them. And, you could choose to marry a man who has other things to recommend him besides a soaring intellect. But ultimately, it will frustrate you to be with a man who just isn’t as smart as you.

Speak for yourself, sister. Now, I KNOW you're not speaking for me. I'm not in your Ivy league, clearly. And I was crazy enough to marry a guy who was born on a commune and never met his father and has less education and makes less money than I do. I guess I have to ask myself why when we SEEM happy, and we are making plans to see a show, I don't ask him how I can possibly go on like this since he doesn't have a masters degree. We SEEM to have good conversations and great sex and cute kids. We SEEM like we've gotten through a lot together. Damn. This whole time, I've been living a lie.

Here is another truth that you know, but nobody is talking about. As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from.

All of this impressive schooling, and no one taught you not to end a sentence with a preposition? The only thing worse is TWO SENTENCES IN A ROW ending in prepositions! Now, I do this all the time, but damn, woman, I went to a liberal arts college. What did you expect?

Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from.

Is this the new math? I'm confused. I remember the last few weeks of my senior year when my roommate brought this freshman kid over all the time, and I was definitely convinced that would never work out, because they were both so damn tall I couldn't imagine how they could fit in the twin sized bed together. Also... AGAIN WITH THE PREPOSITIONS. Jesus!

Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?

Not if they were spending their time doing the new math.

If I had daughters, this is what I would be telling them.



And this--THIS is why your letter went viral, Mrs. Patton. Not only do you have sons (those flawless, unbelievable Princes of Princetonians who could probably do no wrong as boys will be boys and all that) and not daughters, so you really shouldn't talk, but those of us who have daughters know way too many people like you who absolutely will say this kind of trifling shit to our girls all their lives. We know too many people like you who will attempt to instill in happy, interesting, bright little girls some kind of false sense of desperation and desire, a hardness and a coldness that looks at the world and the people in it as if they are goods to be consumed and notches to mark on their frilly garter belts. You speak of jealousy among women and shallowness among men as if those are the standards with which all the other possibilities compare.

I'm writing this, and this, and so many other things, precisely so that my daughter, and my son, know this: They are not better than anyone, though they are loved more by me and their father than anyone else we love. They are not entitled to anything, though I would love for them both to have the world. They are not owed happiness, nor success, and achieving either of those is less important than being a productive member of society who does something to make the world a little bit of a better place for other people living in it. They are worthy because people are worthy, not in the Orwellian sense in which some animals are more equal than others, but in the real sense of the word. The vast majority of people in the world receive no education at all, live in abject poverty, struggle immeasurably every day, and yet when they whisper in their daughters' ears, they just might have something to say that I'd rather hear than this.